


The Illusion Cannot be Sustained

by Ironlawyer



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Avengers Vol. 1 (1963), Dark, Identity Porn, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Prostitution, Remix, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-23 10:12:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13785297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer
Summary: When Tony first decided liquor was more important than pride, he promised himself one thing – blowjobs only. But when a man who looks too much like Steve comes along, that’s all about to change.





	The Illusion Cannot be Sustained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/gifts).
  * Inspired by [All-Time Low](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321581) by [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018) collection. 



> All-Time Low ate my brain. This is not a fix it. I may have made things worse. 
> 
> Thank you to WhenasInSilks for being awesome and doing beta on this at the last minute. Also thanks to Kiyaar for help with the initial idea.

As a child, Tony never really dreamed about the man he would become. No one ever asked Howard Stark’s son what he wanted to be when he grew up because it was inevitable. A businessman, an inventor. A drunk.

Now he is on his knees, out the back of a rundown bar he’d have been too proud to go near when he was still a businessman, a billionaire, a hero. His pants are soaked with something that could be piss or the dregs of beer that might as well be piss. He thinks maybe this was the inevitable. From the day he first chugged whiskey like it was the medicine he needed to make his father proud, this was where he was heading.

The fingers tangled in his hair are pushing him closer and he leans into the pressure, takes this man’s dick deeper. There's a hint of stale sweat and dollar store deodorant somewhere beneath the sex and piss and cigarette ash.

“Mmm, fuck yeah, take it, bitch.” Fucking him deeper, harder, forcing him to stifle the urge to gag that he tells himself is still a reflex and nothing to do with the smell and the taste and the booze that rolls around in an otherwise empty stomach.

They’ve barely started. These are the first words out of this guy’s mouth not punctuated by the awkward pauses as they negotiate prices and rules. Hardly five minutes ago the guy could’ve been any average joe out for a beer after a hard day at work.

Kind of handsome, Tony thinks. He rarely lets himself think it these days. He doesn’t do people. He closes his eyes and buries his face in anonymous cock and never learns their names or memorises their faces. But this guy is young and rugged and a little muscly, and it would be easy for a guy like this to get laid without paying. Sometimes Tony wonders what their stories are. Mostly he just takes it and thinks of the booze.

The man tugs at Tony’s hair until his scalp burns. Always the quiet ones, he thinks. The ones who dance around the words when they ask him, who shuffle with their money like they’re not sure how to pay him. The ones who stare at him but never look him in the eye.

“You like that, fag? You like it, huh?”

Tony prefers it like this.

He focuses on the beat of music in the background. Too quiet to place the song, but it’s easier if he focuses on that instead of the heavy breathing and the words he hasn’t heard since Ty (or since the stranger who fucked him hours earlier). One, two, three, one, two, three. Maybe it’ll be over before the song is. The dick in his mouth punctuates the offbeat.

The emergency exit swings open and for a moment Tony’s sucking cock to the sound of Sinatra. The bartender leans against the old stone wall, back inches from the dumpster, distant streetlight casting an ugly yellow glow across his back. He lights up a smoke and watches the way Tony’s lips work around the stranger’s cock. Tony watches the way he watches. Their eyes meet for a moment, but the bartender says nothing. The cigarette hangs limp from his fingers, burning ash, now forgotten. His free hand pops open the button on his jeans.

The john laughs. “Fuck man, enjoy the free show.”

Tony closes his eyes and goes back to sucking dick because he has no shame now. He is someone’s porno. Someone’s quick, cheap cigarette break jerkoff session. He should charge extra.

The john fucks him till his jaw aches. His lungs burn with the need to take a proper breath and his knees have long gone numb. He calls Tony a whore and a fag and talks like a twelve year old boy in a locker room who’s just learned the meaning of dirty talk. It’d be funny if Tony was still drunk enough.

He kneels and takes it until the john comes down his throat without warning. It tastes like shit, like the guy lives off fast-food and beer. Everything tastes like shit these days. From the first morning drink of liquor, to the last guy who comes in his mouth at night.

He brushes his teeth with disposable toothbrushes in motel bathrooms and pulls pubic hair from his teeth every night but the taste never really goes away. He tastes vodka and whiskey and sherry that might as well be bleach and it all tastes faintly of come and bile. He drinks enough that it doesn’t matter.

The john pulls away and kicks him in the stomach, like he’s a stray dog that won’t stop following him. “Get out of here, you fucking fag,” he says.

The bartender’s still watching. Cigarette dangling from his lips, his pants fixed up like he never opened them. He’s still leaning against the wall, relaxed, like this is any other day.

Tony should ask for the rest of his cash but he’s reading something dark in the john’s eyes. Something about the tightness in the way his shoulders move as he tucks his cock away and buckles his belt.

It’s a good skill to have, for a hooker, he thinks, knowing who’s seconds away from beating the shit out of you. He sticks his hand in his pocket and fingers the worn dollar bills. Half is enough for a drink. No motel, no shower, nothing tonight but a street corner and a bottle of New York’s cheapest.

“I said get the fuck out of here,” the john says. The bartender says nothing.

Tony stumbles to his feet and ignores the way his legs tingle with pins and needles and shake with the cold. He doesn’t look at the bartender or the john or at anything except his worn out loafers and the stains on his pants.

He wipes away come with the back of his wrist and tells his legs to take him where he needs to be. Less than ten minutes to the nearest liquor shop and he walks away with a bottle of brandy and ten cents to his name.

He sits on the sidewalk, the concrete burning his ass through clothes that are too thin for this kind of weather. He drinks until he’s warm and numb and ready to do it all again.

\-----

He has a spot now. Regulars. People who walk past and give him dirty looks because he’s blatant and disgusting and ruining their neighbourhood. People who pay daily to call him fag and whore and cocksucker and all of the things that he is now.

He stands on his corner sipping brandy from the bottle and waits. People come and go but he’s learned what to look for. Mostly they’re looking for women. He doesn’t blame them for passing him by. Standing in the half-light so they can’t see how fucked up he is, the way his legs don’t want to stand straight, the way his clothes are stiff with half dried filthy water, the way his lips and jaw are swollen and bruised. He probably smells like a bar mat.

Time drifts like it always does, his mind can’t focus on it anymore. It could be hours or minutes, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He measure it only by how fast the bottle goes down. He’ll only start caring once the brandy is gone.

When the bottle’s almost empty and no one’s come by, he chugs the last dregs and throws it across the street. He never used to litter.

He sees him then. The crash of the bottle catches his attention and he turns to Tony. Tall and blond with heavy set shoulders and in the half-light Tony could almost imagine…

He moves wrong. His gait is too heavy. Steve is graceful, fluid. Steve moves like a dancer who’s never off the stage. This guy moves like there are weights in his shoes. The man looks at Tony and smiles and it’s a twisted, lecherous smirk that says _I know what you are_ and _I’m going to fuck you till you cry_. Tony thinks he looks nothing like Steve. Tony thinks it’s the closest he’ll ever get to seeing Steve’s smile again.

"How much?” the guy asks and Tony hears the echo of Steve’s voice. It strikes something tight and cold in his chest that keeps coming back. He won’t let himself examine it too closely, just pushes it down somewhere deep until he remembers that he’s forgotten how to feel.

“For what?” Tony asks.

“The works.”

This is where Tony says _blowjobs only_ and sets the line he promised himself he’d never cross. He thinks of all the fantasies he’s ever had of Steve, lying in bed and picturing Steve lying next to him, how it would feel to hold his hand, what his lips would taste like.

He thinks he could never deserve any of that.

“Fifty,” Tony says. It’s lower than it should be because the guy is blond and muscular and Tony needs him to say yes.

“To fuck you?” The guy’s eyes are as blue as Steve’s. He sounds surprised, he’s done this before and he knows how cheap that is. Tony wants to say _I’d let you fuck me for free._

“Whatever you want,” Tony says. And he means it. He means it. He means make me choke on your dick, make me cry and bleed and piss the bed. Fuck me till I feel numb. He doesn’t say it, he never says it. He knows how to make him do it without saying a word.

“Anything?”

“Whatever you want,” Tony repeats. He’ll lay on the backseat of a car or the creaky, strained mattress of New York’s cheapest motel and take whatever he’s given, because this man could be Steve. He’ll walk away with come dripping down his thighs and wonder if it’ll kill him, or if something else will first.

This is what he deserves.

The john smiles and asks, “You haven’t done this before, have you?” There’s an eager tinge to his voice, an edge of increasing excitement and Tony knows the answer the guy is looking for.

“No,” he says, “never.” He thinks of Ty and countless faceless strangers and he doesn’t think of Steve.

“Come with me.” Tony follows him to a Mercedes, so out of place on the streets that smell of piss and garbage that it seems like something alien. He looks at the man again and notices the way his clothes are tailored and his wedding ring studded with diamonds. He wonders if he might’ve known this man once.

The man holds the door open and Tony is standing, staring into a life he used to have.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” Tony says and as he steps inside he smells the leather of the seats and the aftershave that probably costs more an ounce than Tony’s charging him for this. “Nothing’s wrong.”

\-----

“So what do I call you?” the stranger asks.

He thinks of the way his name sounds on Steve’s lips, smooth and soft like it is something beautiful, like his name belongs to Steve and only he can ever give it meaning. That is not how his name should sound.

"Tony," he says and he thinks about Ty and getting fucked till he bleeds. The way it made his stomach hurt and the way he couldn’t walk straight for hours after. He doesn’t think about what it would really be like to get fucked by Steve.

“Put your belt on, Tony. I won’t court trouble.”

Tony wonders what _he_ is if not trouble. The smell of whiskey and sex bathed into his clothes and flesh like a flickering neon sign saying _come fuck this if you’re desperate_. He is a beating heart and flowing blood. He is a skeleton and organs and tiny electrical impulses telling them how to move. He is a cheap warm body for people who are lonely and desperate, and he is not a human being.

He buckles his belt.

The car pulls away and Tony stares at a fine smudge on the window until the lights of New York blur into a faded watercolour.  He listens to the almost inaudible beats of Tchaikovsky on the low tuned radio and remembers a time when he listened to this same music while he worked. He supposes he’s listening to it while he works now.

“Nervous?” the john asks.

Tony thinks he remembers how it felt to be nervous. He remembers his hands shaking beneath the gauntlets the first time he put them on and the way his voice would crack and only the modulator would cover it. His hands aren’t shaking now. “Maybe a little,” he says and it’s steady, unwavering. Steve would’ve known he was faking.

“Yeah, well, I can’t promise to be gentle, but you’ll make your wage.” He reaches across the console and runs a hand up Tony’s thigh. His fingers squeeze and Tony can feel his own heart pounding against the pressure. He wants to say _don’t fucking touch me_ but this is what he is now. He doesn’t get to say no.

\-----

They pull up outside a motel where the pebble-dashed walls are freshly painted and all the lights in the neon sign are still working. Almost too good for this. The car idles for a moment and the john stares at Tony as Tony stares out the windscreen.

“Wait here while I get a key.” He doesn’t wait for a reply and Tony continues to stare out the window. The door locks click like he’s a skittish animal about to run if the cage isn’t secure. Like he didn’t offer this. Like he has somewhere better to be.

Tony still knows how to hotwire a car. He leans over and checks the glovebox: there’s a handful of loose change, a rumpled five dollar bill, a half crushed carton of Malboro’s and matches wedged in the back. He scoops the change into his hand and counts it. Seven dollars and eighty-two cents. It would buy a bottle of the cheap stuff and he could drive until the car runs out of gas, sleep inside, almost safe and almost warm, then ditch the car before the cops come looking.

Instead he shoves the change in his pocket and grabs the cigarettes. He used to smoke pipes and cigars. He straightens out a bent cigarette, holds it between his teeth and with shaky fingers strikes a match. He stares at the flame until his fingers burn. He could drop it. Let the fire take hold on the expensive upholstery, until he chokes on the smoke like he should’ve done that night in the flophouse. The match burns out.

He lights another and holds it to the cigarette. His lungs fill with smoke; the car fills with smoke. His eyes start to water. He feels like a dog left in a hot car on a summer day and wonders if anyone would bother to break the glass to save him. Steve would, but not because it’s him.

There’s a knock on the window and the doors click again. Tony’s door is wrenched open and the john grabs his arm and tugs him till he’s on his knees in the parking lot. The john leans over and pulls the still lit cigarette from Tony’s lips and crushes it beneath his shoe.

“No smoking in the car, you goddamn whore.” Tony imagines Steve saying it.

He stares at shoes that are waxed and polished so thoroughly that they reflect his haggard face through the warm glow of the streetlights. The john look like he belong in a boardroom, not here, two seconds away from kicking a hooker’s face in and two minutes away from fucking him. Tony wonders how long it takes to buff dried blood from Italian leather.

“Get up,” the john says. Tony does. “Follow me.” Tony does. His fingers clench around the coins rattling in his pocket and he wonders what it would take to make Steve really hurt him.

\-----

The room is basic but clean. No stains on the carpet or bed sheets, the wallpaper isn’t peeling and it smells of cheap air freshener and old cigarettes instead of come and liquor. Not so long ago this was sleeping rough.

The john steps in behind him and closes the door but pays Tony no mind. He flicks the TV on and tunes through the static till voices break the awkward silence. 

“Go take a shower, Tony,” the man says without taking his eyes off the screen. “I don’t fuck dirty street rats."

Tony remembers the way Steve talked when he found him in the bowery flophouse. A different kind of cold. He stands for a moment and watches the stranger’s back, the way a tuft of blond hair sticks out at the side, like Steve’s used to after he’d been wearing the cowl. He could run his fingers through it, lean in and place a kiss on Steve’s neck and it would taste better than any booze.

But that is not what this is.

He leaves the bathroom door ajar, because everything is part of the show now. He is being paid for this.

He strips and leaves his clothes on the floor because it’s not worth caring about pants that hang off his hips despite the extra hole punched into the belt, or the fraying shirt that only just covers enough that it almost looks like his body isn’t falling apart.

The water is near scalding but it’s the first consistently hot water he’s felt in a long time. In the motels he usually visits it runs hot and cold and he comes away feeling like there is still dirt buried under his nails and stuck to his skin, the dried, flaky remnants of old come never quite cleared from his hair.

There are little bottles of shampoo here, not the dispensers hanging half broken from the stalls he usually showers in. He flicks the cap off and squirts the luminous green aloe scented soap into his fingers and remembers a time when all his shampoo cost a hundred dollars a bottle and smelled of bergamot or lemongrass. Remembers the lotions, conditioners and shaving balms and how he used to care what he looked like.

He runs his hand down his body, wraps his fingers round his limp cock and wonders if he should jerk off. Make sure he can’t get hard for the stranger outside. Make sure it hurts when that man who isn’t Steve touches him.

He strokes a few times but he stays soft. He tries to think of the last time he jerked off and it feels like another life. Lying on a feather down comforter in an apartment furnished with things he’d have to suck fifty guys off to even look at these days. He’d thought of Steve.

He turns to the door and can make out a muscular arm draped across the chair outside. Tony wonders if Steve would wait so patiently like this.

He turns his back to the door and lets go of his dick.

He can hear the TV over the beat of the water, just the background buzz of high pitched voices. He wonders what it’s like on be the other end. How this can be so easy and familiar that the john can sit there watching TV while the whore he’s going to fuck is in the other room washing off the remnants of the countless others he’s fucked this week. He wonders what it would take for this to be that easy for him too – a few shots more, maybe.

He tilts his head back and lets the water fill his mouth. He ought to breathe it, let it fills his lungs. Let his body drown like the rest of him. He flicks the water off and lets it drip off him, clinging to his skin. He starts to shiver. The bathroom is cold.

He grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. His fingers are shaking as he ties it. It’s stupid. He has nothing left to hide. He looks down at his body and sees something ugly, the sharp line of ribs where there used to be muscle, scars that stand out like paint streaks on skin that’s cracked and tight. He wonders what it takes to want this, to want him. What kind of man could fuck something so pathetic?

He drops the towel and walks out like he is still Tony Stark. Like he is still handsome and strong and people would wish they could be like him.

The john turns to him when the door slams closed. He’s naked now, his clothes neatly folded on the sideboard. He turns the TV off and stares at Tony like a homeowner checks out a contractor’s work, making sure everything is as they asked before paying.

“Good enough,” he says, like he’d been hoping for better. As if Tony could’ve come out of a cheap motel bathroom like he’d been to a salon.

He should ask about the money now. Nothing ever starts before he’s been paid half. Instead he goes to the bed and sits, the water that still clings to his skin soaking the sheets. He spreads his legs, showing something he should not be offering. He thinks of Steve and how he might’ve looked at him. The john looks at him with something hollow and wrong and he thinks that’s how Steve would look at him now, if he could see him like this. It’s how he deserves to be looked at.

“What are you waiting for?” Tony asks. And he should be setting boundaries. He should be charging extra for the rough stuff. He should be asking for a condom. _Should, should, should._ He doesn’t care.

The john steps closer, too close. In Tony’s space, breathing the same air. His aftershave is subtle and woody, something Tony can’t place. It’s nothing like Steve’s.

“Turn over,” the john says, “I don’t want to see your face.” Tony thinks that’s okay, he doesn’t want to see the john’s face either. Too much like Steve, not enough like Steve’s. He wants to let this be what it ought to be, and nothing like what it is.

He wants to close his eyes and make the john fuck him, he wants to feel something more than this hollow, crumbing emptiness, this shadow of something that should be emotion.

This is nothing. This is not a connection, it’s not sex or love or anything of value. It’s not Steve.

He turns over, rests his head on the cheap and stiff sheets, the kind that leave chafed skin in the morning and smell of industrial detergent. He was never too good for this, he just thought too much of himself.

The john’s hands are on his back, running down the curve of his spine. The callouses on his fingers are like sandpaper on Tony’s skin. He’s probably a musician or something, but Tony imagines a shield in his hands.

It’s too gentle, too slow. Not how it’s supposed to be.

He remembers Ty’s hands. The way everything was soft and slow until it wasn’t. The way it always started with love and ended with a sickness that was more than just the pain. He needs to feel that now.

“Just fuck me,” Tony says and the john laughs.

“Is foreplay not included in ‘everything’?”

Tony thinks of the way his hands are shaking, the emptiness in his stomach that only the booze can fill. He thinks of the way Steve looked at him the last time he saw him, that tightness in his words that spoke more than a raised voice ever could. Steve would not touch him like this.

“Do what you want,” he says but he pushes back, grinding his ass against the john. He takes the john’s hands and presses them to his hips, squeezes his fingers until they’re tight enough to bruise. “Whatever you want.”

The john take a sharp breath and starts to grind back.

He remember when Ty said they were going to make love, when everything that started tender ended cruel. It was love, some form of it; that’s why he’d taken it so long. The john’s dick is pressing at Tony’s ass and Tony lets himself imagine. He closes his eyes and thinks, _Steve, Steve, Steve._ Maybe this is some form of love too.

He still remembers how to lie there and take it.

The john pulls away with a gasp and Tony spreads his legs and cants his hips against the bed, grinding, listening to the sound of the john’s breathing, the slide of flesh on flesh. Cold fingers press against his asshole.

Steve would never touch him like this.

The john leans over and bites at the nape of Tony’s neck. Tony wishes he would draw blood.

“Fuck me,” Tony says and this time, the john listens.

\-----

His face is pushed into the blankets, stifling air heavy in his chest. He is trying to drag it through his lungs as the rhythm pushes him down, harder, deeper, until the mattress might swallow him whole. A sharp tug then, his neck whipped back, his scalp burning, and cold air filling his lungs with gasps he can’t control. He coughs on it, too cold and sudden, stinging his throat. The man behind him moans as he convulses.

“Fuck yeah. You like that, huh, bitch?’

“Yeah,” he says and his voice is raw and breathless. He doesn’t know why he’s saying it. “I like it.” The words come out like they don’t belong to him. His hips hurt. His ass hurts. His stomach hurts. It’s not enough.

The john’s hands are pressing hard against his back, his whole weight leaning down. Tony wonders how much he weighs, how much worse it would feel if this was Steve.

“Harder,” Tony says.

The john goes harder.

He moves one hand from Tony’s back, rests it on the sheets by his head, fingers splayed, wedding ring glistening in the lamp light. His other hand moves to Tony’s neck, squeezing tighter, tighter with every thrust. Near choking. Not enough. Still not enough.

Tony reaches out and rests his hand over the john’s. He wraps his fingers around the wedding ring, runs his thumb across the diamond studs and pictures her. Some pretty, naive young woman, waiting for her husband who always works too late and never wants to fuck her. He thinks of her tucking their kid in at night, eating dinner alone, going to bed without her husband because she can’t wait up anymore. The ring is tight, like it’s been there for years and it fit better once.

The john pulls his hand away, and both hands are at Tony’s neck now, fingers flexing as he fucks him harder. Tony wonders what his wife would think. He imagines the pain and betrayal on her face and how she would look at Tony like he had caused this.

He doesn’t think of Steve. He doesn’t think of Steve.

Tony thinks he was made for this.

“Is that it?” Tony asks. “Aren’t you going to get your money’s worth?”

“Shut your fucking mouth, you whore.” The words sound right.

“Make me.”

He flips Tony over and wraps his hands around his throat. Squeezing, crushing. Too much. Not enough.

Black dots creeping in his vision, blurring the face of the man in front of him. He could be Steve. Steve, choking the life out of him. Steve, fucking him bloody and raw. It could be Steve, it should be Steve. He hopes the john kills him.

Tony’s hands clutch weakly at the wrists of the man who could be Steve. He knows what dying feels like, that feeling every time the chest plate ran low. It was never as good as this.

The hands are released suddenly and Tony’s drawing breath past the pain of phantom fingers. There is come dripping down his thighs.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the john says.

He watches from the bed as the john grabs his clothes and throws money on the counter and leaves without a backward glance.

It hurts to breathe. It hurts more to think.

He lays on the sheets, staring blankly at the ceiling. Eventually the buzzing in his brain starts calling for the only thing he ever needs these days, and that’s enough to make his body move.

\-----

Days later he stands in a motel shower, watching pink tinged water spiral down the drain. They pay by the hour but it takes less than twenty minutes for most of them to come so he has time. He wonders how long it would take Steve to come. An eternity maybe. Or maybe only twenty minutes too.

The money comes in quick when he doesn’t care who fucks him or how they do it. Enough booze numbs the blood and bruises. Enough booze keeps his mind too foggy to question why he’s doing this. He drinks so he can let them fuck him, he lets them fuck him so he can drink.

He might be getting a reputation. All you need is bottle-blond hair and hint of a six-pack and he’s yours for the low, low price of the cheapest bottle of vodka you can find, half what any decent whore would charge, and whatever a human soul goes for these days.

He begs men who almost look like Steve to fuck him till he bleeds. He drinks enough that when he looks at them he almost can’t tell the difference. He says things sometimes that he can’t remember later, drunk, murmured words that might be something like _forgive me_ and _I love you_. They fuck him harder and they walk away and sometimes he cries.

He turns the shower off and dresses in his work clothes. Work clothes used to be a tank top, grease stained slacks and sometimes a pair of worn out welding goggles; now they’re tight pleather pants and a shirt that wouldn’t fit a kid half his size. He doesn’t look at himself anymore; it was hard enough before he became this desperate, pathetic whore.

He stands on his corner with a half bottle of cheap whiskey at his feet and sips it when the johns aren’t looking.

It’s been slow all day; the hint of snow about to come down keeps all but the most desperate of the johns away.  His wallet’s running empty, his bottle running dry.

Even with the whiskey, it’s too cold to be out, and his work clothes are barely adequate to stave off frostbite. He drinks until his vision goes hazy and he can hardly stand straight. The desperate ones don’t care how drunk he is.

Then comes the first man to cross his corner all evening, wrapped up in a downy coat, face half covered by a scarf and hat. He walks carefully, deliberately, eyes locked in front of him like he knows this neighbourhood and thinks catching someone’s eye is enough to catch something else.

Broad shoulders, his footsteps light and fluid, hint of blond hair beneath the hat. He’d be perfect on the best day. Tony is desperate enough to risk it.

“Hey, mister,” he calls, “looking for a good time?”

The stranger freezes, completely unmoving. Maybe he misjudged. At least if he spends the night in a jail cell it’ll be warm.

Slowly, the stranger turns to him. Tony doesn’t meet his eye, he never does. They don’t notice that he doesn’t look at their faces. It breaks the illusion too quickly.

He tilts his head back, bears his neck like an animal in submission and shuffles his hips to draw eyes to his ass. It’s a practiced routine. The shy ones like it--makes them feel like he wants them, he supposes. In a way, he does.

Of all of them, this man resembles Steve the most. It’s fucked up how much Tony wants him. He’s fucked up. He wants this more than he’s wanted anything in a long time. He grabs the bottle by his feet, chugs and tries not to think about it. The man who could be Steve watches silently and he might be shaking beneath that feather down parka. Tony can’t tell if it’s rage or anticipation.

“Don’t you want to feel good?” Tony asks, running his hand along the neck of the bottle. “I can do whatever you like."

“Tony?” the man says. It’s a strange, choked noise, with just the right long-familiar drawl. Tony closes his eyes and remembers the game. If he wasn’t so disgusting and desperate, if he wasn’t the kind of man Steve would look at with disgust, if he wasn’t standing on a pick-up spot waiting to get fucked by a stranger. Tony has a good imagination. He’s going to get fucked by Steve tonight. He swigs the whiskey.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “that’s me.” He wishes he had never told anyone his name. But the name doesn’t belong to him anymore. The man who was Tony Stark is long dead, replaced by this moving automaton made of booze and come and blood. His name belongs to strangers now.

The man who will be Steve tonight hisses like all the air has been punched out of him. He stares at Tony’s feet and the streetlight catches on his shoulders. He moves minutely, like there are insects buzzing under his skin.

Maybe it’s his first time.

Tony swigs the whiskey.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks.

It’s a strange way to ask, but he’s not the first guy to be coy about it. They’re usually the vicious ones. Repressed. Frustrated. Needing something almost human to channel that aggression into. They like it when he cries.

“Whatever you want,” Tony says because he has no pride and he has no shame and there is nothing that he wouldn’t do for a man who looks like Steve.

“What?”

“Blowjobs, handjobs, whatever. You can fuck me as hard as you like. Kinky shit too, if that’s your thing.”

“Oh.” He pauses like he’s only just figured it out.  As if anyone could look at him and mistake him for something better. “Is that… is it the money?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Well, I don’t do it for free.”

“Are… are you okay?”

He wonders what that’s supposed to mean. Clean? Sober? Up for rough stuff? He doesn’t have the patience for this kind of bullshit anymore. The john still won’t look at Tony, like a shy college kid asking out his crush. It’s almost as pathetic as Tony is.

“Are you fucking interested or not?” Tony asks.

“Can’t I just take you for dinner or something?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No, I just want to –“

“I’m not some high-class, fucking escort. You pay, you fuck me and you leave.”

“But –“

“Look, if you’re not into it, fine. March on your merry way and never think of me again.”

“Is… is that how this has to go?”

“Fuck me or don’t. Just stop wasting my time.”

The man makes a desperate sound, half choked, like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Tony thinks it’s strange that he keeps doing that. He’d choked on his name like it was somehow shocking, and now he’s holding his breath like he doesn’t know how to say yes. “Okay,” he says. Tony thinks it sounds more like he’s agreeing to kill someone than to fuck them.

Tony looks at the bottle in his hand and then he looks at the stranger. This man whose face blurs into a thousand men and a thousand fantasies. This man whose eyes he can’t meet and who he can’t look away from. His fingers flex like he wants to hold a shield, his voice and footsteps carry just the right weight, he tilts his head in the same way Steve does when he gets nervous or upset. This man who stands on a street corner negotiating with a hooker. He is nothing like Steve and everything like Steve.

He wonder how tonight will end. With the life draining out of him, with the illusion of Steve’s voice in his ear, with Steve’s cock down his throat or Tony’s blood on the sheets. What would it take to make this man kill him, to turn this Steve into a murderer? What kind of man does it make Tony for considering it? He thinks maybe Steve would be more disgusted by that than anything else.

He closes his eyes, but only for a second. He has always been a fantasist. Once upon a time it made him who he was: world class inventors need to imagine like world class chefs need to taste.

He opens his eyes and sees Steve. Only Steve.

“I can stay with you?” Steve asks.

“Sure,” Tony says. “If you’re paying.”

There is something wretched and painful that contorts Steve’s face, a tension in his jawline that is too much like the real thing. Of all the men who’ve fucked him this month, none of them have hit so hard.

Tony looks at his feet and tries to remember what confidence felt like. “What do you say, soldier? Want to fuck me?”

Steve says, “Okay,” and sounds like he’s going to cry.

\-----

Tony’s regular enough at the motel now that the owner looks at him with apathy instead of disgust. He slides stained, crumpled dollar bills across the desk in exchange for keys tied to an ugly block of well-worn metal with the room number stamped on. He doesn’t check the number; 18 is his room now.

The would-be Steve sticks to him like a shadow, trailing his footsteps up to the room, watching his every move, the way his legs can’t stay straight and he leans against the wall as he walks. The constant attention makes his skin crawl. Most men don’t want to see. They’ll give him a once over and whatever shame they’ve got bubbling under their skin will stop them looking any closer. This time it’s Tony who can’t look.

They reach the room and Tony fumbles to get the keys in the lock. His fingers tremble too much for fine work these days. He should laugh; fine work was once fixing microcircuits.

They step inside and Steve looks at the tobacco stained wallpaper. His nose wrinkles at the feint hint of piss that always lingers in the room. He looks like he wants to say something.

“Walk away if you want,” Tony says. “Or pay for something better."

“No… this… this is fine.” It sounds like he means more than the room.

“Yeah, sure. It’s a hundred for an hour and you can do what you want.”

Tony dumps his jacket on the worn out chipboard cabinet and kicks off boots that scream hooker and leave his feet with scabby blisters. Steve doesn’t move.

“That’s it then? We’re not going to…?” He shakes his head and trails off and just for a moment Tony lets himself wonder what he was going to say. He doesn’t usually let himself feel curious anymore, but this guy looks and sound too familiar and it’s prying something loose before he can shut it down.

Steve takes out his wallet and counts the bills. “A hundred dollars,” he says it like he can’t believe it, like he’d expected more. Tony is a cheap lay, an easy one, for people who can’t afford pretty and experienced.

Steve holds the bills out like he’s passing over a glass filled with poison and Tony takes them and counts them and shoves them in his pocket. It’s a hundred, solid, and Tony thinks he was right, the guy’s never done this before.

Johns are usually demanding, but this guy just keeps staring at him, silent, unmoving. Tony strips his clothes off quickly and lets them fall to the floor. Steve watches him like he doesn’t know how this is supposed to go.

“You haven’t done this before, have you?” Tony asks. “What are you, thirty? Never fucked a guy or just never done a hooker? Don’t tell me you’re a fucking virgin.”

“Tony…”

“Are you going to fuck me or what? Would you rather I just blow you?”

He grabs Steve’s belt, fiddles with the buckle, pulls his boots off one by one and throws them across the room. Steve doesn’t move. He could be a statue, barely breathing. Tony wonders how fast his heart is beating beneath that parka. He tugs his pants down. Cheap, blue, cotton boxers. Thrifty, he thinks, like the real Steve. No sign of an erection.

“Why are you doing this?” Steve asks.

“Because you’re paying me."

“That’s it?" 

“Do you want to do this or do you want to leave? You’re not getting your money back.”

“I don’t care about the money, for fuck sake.” He reaches out, rests his hands on Tony’s shoulders and Tony watches the way his Adam’s apple wobbles. His fingers feel tense, they squeeze a little too hard, but not like the johns usually do. It’s like he’s trying to be gentle but his body won’t listen.

“I just want…” His words are shaky, soft, Tony almost can’t hear them. He almost doesn’t want to. “I just want to be with you.”

He imagines Steve saying those words. If there had ever been a chance, he lost it to the booze. He chose what was important to him. This is all he has now. This shadow of something he never let himself want for real.

Steve leans in close, their lips almost touching. Tony closes his eyes so he won’t see the details that aren’t quite Steve.

He’s never kissed a customer before, it’s always off the table. They’re supposed to be something else, no tenderness, no love. Some other kind of fucked up fantasy. But he lets the kiss be something slow and tender and dangerous. Like a first kiss with a real lover might be. He feels the warmth of Steve’s breath, tastes the faint hint of coffee for the first time in weeks. Steve kisses like this is real, like Tony is what he’s always dreamed about. Tony wonders if he reminds this man of someone as thoroughly as he reminds Tony of Steve.

Steve pulls back before the kiss can go deeper. “Christ…” he says, like this is something special. This is not how it’s supposed to go. Tony is supposed to be crying and screaming and bleeding. It’s supposed to hurt his body, because his soul’s already dying.

He grabs Steve by the wrist and drags him towards the bed.

“Come on, you’re paying to fuck me, not for a dance.” But the words are empty and he doesn’t know if this can be just sex and pain anymore.

He unzips the parka and runs his hands down Steve’s chest. His muscles are lean and tight beneath the shirt. He could be a super soldier.

Tony pushes away the something in his chest that he can’t quite identify. He drops his hands from Steve’s chest like maybe if he stops touching him he can stop this slowly sinking feeling from turning into something worse.

He lays across the bed, as he always does, spreading his legs out, showing his ass.

“No,” Steve says and he lays a hand on Tony’s back, warm, heavy, calloused. This man makes it so easy to imagine. "I want to touch you,” he says. “I want to see you.”

Tony wants to say yes. He wants to turn over and see Steve, he wants to fuck like they do in his dreams. “No. I don’t do it like that.”

“You said I could do what I wanted as long as I paid.”

Tony has forgotten how to say no. "Extra,” he says. “It’ll cost extra.” That would be enough to convince most not to.

“Anything,” Steve says. “Whatever you want.”

“Double.” He doesn’t care about the money. He wants to look at Steve, not this man who almost could be him.

“Okay.” So he lets this Steve flips him over and he closes his eyes. Steve settles on the bed next to him and pulls him over, wrapping his arms around Tony’s back. Tony moves like a ragdoll. His arms come to rest over Steve’s shoulders, his legs wrapped around his waist.

“We don’t have to do this,” Steve says. But it’s just part of the game. This man is paying for the fantasy of something different than the others. Tony should feel sorry for him.

Tony rests his head on Steve’s shoulder and presses his nose against the crook of Steve’s neck. He breathes the smell of lemongrass. His old smell on Steve’s skin. It smells like something impossible. He can smell the come and whiskey on his own breath and maybe Steve can smell it too. It’s stuck to him, steeped into his flesh like it’s a part of him now.

He turns his head away and stares out the crack in the curtains to the glow of the streetlights. It’s snowing. Coming down hard and heavy. He’ll be out there again soon. Maybe it’ll kill him. He grinds his ass against Steve’s limp cock and thinks he can do this one last thing.

He lets himself moan into Steve’s ear like they are lovers. Gives himself over to what this man wants him to be. He tries to imagine that he’s in love, that he is touching him because it’s what they’ve always wanted. He tries to remember what it’s like to have sex when no one is paying.

He tries to think of what he might’ve had with Steve.

His eyes start to sting. He doesn’t think this man will like it when he cries.

He drops one arm, fingers going to the cock beneath him, stroking, grinding his hips until the man – _Steve_ – starts to get hard.

Tony feels like he is rotting from the inside. Something eating away at his pulpy, fleshy humanity; maggots squirming beneath his blemished skin.  Almost normal on the surface, but crack him open and you’d recoil in disgust. He wonders if this Steve can feel it. The way Steve keeps looking at him, touching him, Tony thinks maybe Steve once knew what happiness felt like, that he’s doing this because he needs to feel it again.

Steve’s hands are on his back, touching him, always touching him. Tony knew what it was like to be touched with love once too. This is almost like that, if he lets himself close his eyes and think of Steve. Light fingers running down his back, soft breath and a tenderness he doesn’t deserve.

“I wish…” Steve says and Tony thinks _I wish too_ , but only hushes him.

Steve shouldn’t wish, he thinks, he shouldn’t either. He is not this man’s fantasy, he is not his wish. He should pull back and look at him and see that he is not Steve and tell him, _I’m not who you want me to be, I’m just a fucking hooker_. But they both already know that and they’re here anyway.

As Tony grinds, Steve’s breath goes heavy. Not like the men who groan and curse, who don’t want to know they’re fucking a human being. Tony has learned to be quiet and he has learned to be loud and he no longer knows what is natural. “Shh, shh,” he says to the man who could be Steve, but really he’s telling himself.

He pushes down on Steve’s cock and starts to fuck him. Steve doesn’t move and doesn’t breathe.

Tony has been living like this. Not living. An autopilot of breathe and move and drink and fuck. There’s no life in it. He holds on to bottles of booze like a dying man clings to his faith. He is shaking now. Always shaking under the surface, his body holds it back but he is buzzing inside. He wants to cry like he has cried so many times before, but the tears don’t come.

“I love you,” he whispers into the ear of this Steve who isn’t Steve. This man needs to hear it as much as he needs to say it. They’re like children, he thinks, playing pretend. It’s a sickness. The part of him that should be withering away, shrivelled and dying in a bath of alcohol and meaningless sex, is trying to pull itself back to life. Clinging to this make believe like it could ever mean more than two desperate men throwing themselves into the fire and hoping that they’ll feel the burn.

This game is dangerous. The man will come soon and then he’ll look at Tony like the pitiful animal he is, or he won’t look at him at all.  He’ll right his clothes and throw his money on the table and he will leave.

Tony will take his money and funnel the nearest bottle of booze down his throat and hope that if he wakes up sprawled across the sidewalk he won’t remember what happened tonight.

Maybe Tony will never see this Steve again, or maybe Steve will find his comfort in this, want it again, and they’ll dance this dance every night until Tony can’t take it. Until his veins are filled with more whiskey than blood and it’s still not enough to stop him feeling. He should stop this now. Say _keep your money, you need a therapist not a whore_. It was never meant to be like this.

He can feel hot tears on his shoulder and Steve is shaking. He’s making horrible, choked sounds that are nothing like the ones Tony’s used to hearing. Tony wraps his arms around the man’s back and feels the ripple of his muscles as he sobs. They’re not even really fucking anymore.

“Tony.” The man gasps. His name sounds different coming from him. He’s heard it countless times on the lips of men now, used like a curse, like a poison, like if they say it too loud he might become human and they might have to look at him and see what they’re doing.

This isn’t that. This man says Tony like he imagines Steve would.

He thinks of countless men who could’ve made him feel something. The way his body has become this aching pile of limbs and emptiness.

“Steve,” he says and he doesn’t care what the john will think. He can take his money and run. Maybe it would be better for both of them.

Steve’s fingers tighten around his hips and he bucks and sobs like he’s breaking apart as much as Tony is. Tony thinks this is what feeling is like. It’s burning inside. It’s neurons firing telling your body you’re in a kind of pain that no doctor can fix. It’s the world narrowing until everything is now and there is no before and no after.

He is here with Steve now and he remembers what it’s like to feel. He plays back all the moments in the last few months, every man who’s chosen to hurt him, every time he let them do it. The way he’s walked around with a body always on the edge of being broken. The way he’s let himself believe that it’s what he needs. The way he let himself believe that’s what being with Steve would really be like.

The way this will be over soon and he’ll go back to that, because it’s all he knows now.  All he deserves.

This needs to be over.

He pulls away, takes his hands from Steve’s back and feels the cold of drying sweat on his skin. He lets his hair fall over his eyes and doesn’t look. Never look. Never look. The illusion is too fragile. He won’t be able to finish if he breaks it.

"Come on.” He twists his hips, fucks him harder, faster, till it almost hurts. “Make me feel it. Make me remember what you feel like. Make me miss you. Make me love you.”

Steve gasps and shakes and comes and Tony pulls away while he’s still reeling. He turns his back to him, picks his clothes up from the floor and runs the fabric through his shaking fingers.

There’s silence then. Stillness. Like the world has stopped moving. Tony feels this stranger’s come dripping down his thighs and thinks it feels no different to everybody else’s.

“What… what now?” Steve asks.

“Nothing,” Tony says. “That’s what you paid for.” The words shake and he tells himself it’s just from the booze. Steve is silent. He is still sitting on the bed like he’s expecting something more. “We’re done here,” Tony tells him. Without turning to look he goes into the bathroom, flips the flimsy lock and stands under the shower without turning on the spray.

He can hear Steve moving on the other side. He wonders if he’ll leave the money, but finds he doesn’t care. He wants to never see him again. He wants to remember how to stop feeling. Go back to feeling numb and drunk and one step away from dead. He wants to never know what it might’ve felt like to get fucked by Steve.

He turns the shower on so he can pretend it’s only water on his face.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, but eventually the water runs cold and his fingers go shrivelled. He wraps a towel around his waist and steps back into the room. His clothes are neatly folded and laid out on the bed. Steve’s – _the john’s_ clothes are gone.

The window’s open, curtains whipping in the wind, snow melting on the carpet, the smell of sex already fading.

On the sideboard, wedged halfway beneath a stained ashtray are a handful of bills. Tony takes them, counts thirty nine dollars and doesn’t have the energy to feel bitter.

There’s a folded sheet of curling, off-white motel paper beneath the bills, and tucked between the folds is a credit card. For a moment Tony wonders what kind of insane the guy is.

 _I’m sorry,_ the note says, _I didn’t have enough. You know the PIN. Take what you need. Take all of it. If you change your mind, about_ anything, _I’ll be there. I love you._

Tony reads it four times and can’t make sense of it. Maybe it’s just another part of the fantasy.

Then he catches the name on the card.

The note falls from his fingers. His legs go out and he hits the floor hard. He curls up on the carpet, his fingers combing through the coarse, dusty fibres like there’s some comfort to be found there. Touching it like he touched _Steve._

 _I love you,_ Steve had written. _I love you,_ Tony had said. He had thought it was a lie.

He thinks of touching Steve and kissing him and fucking him. Steve knows what he is now. You don’t love a whore. Tony had thought he’d forgotten what shame feels like.

He starts to sob and thinks of how many times he has before, how they would laugh and curse and fuck him harder. He thinks of how he couldn’t cry earlier. Maybe Steve would’ve comforted him. He wonders how much he needs to drink to forget everything.

**Author's Note:**

> [On Tumblr](http://ironlawyer.tumblr.com/post/171496647097/fic-the-illusion-cannot-be-sustained)


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